Elisabetta Boella

Short Bio

I obtained the BSc and MSc degrees in Energy and Energy and Nuclear Engineer in 2006 and 2009, respectively, from Politecnico di Torino (Turin, Italy). Part of the final Master project was developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos, NM), where I have been visiting student for eight months in 2009.
In 2010, I enrolled in a joint PhD program, which allowed me to pursue my research interests at Politecnico di Torino, under the guidance of Prof. G. Coppa, and at Instituto Superior Tecnico in the Group of Lasers and Plasmas (GoLP) led by Prof. L. O. Silva. My research focused on ion acceleration in laser-driven plasmas. I tackled some of the main questions on table-top ion accelerators from a theoretical perspective and from a numerical point of view. I performed massively parallel Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations and developed reduced gridless algorithms to focus on specific aspects of the acceleration dynamics. I obtained the PhD degree in Energetics from Politecnico di Torino in May 2014.
After the PhD, I continued to carry out my research on laser-driven collisionless shocks at GoLP until April 2016. In May 2016, I moved to KU Leuven, where I joined the group of Prof. G. Lapenta. Here, I contributed to the development of an innovative Energy Conserving PIC algorithm, which I used to study reconnection events in the solar corona and tangential discontinuities at the magnetopause.
In March 2019 I moved to Lancaster University to take up the challenge of becoming a lecturer in one of the highest ranked Physics Departments in the UK. Here, I am leading a cutting-edge research program on plasma kinetic simulations. With colleagues from the Cockcroft Institute, I am involved in forefront experiments to explore laser-driven particle acceleration.

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Research

My research is devoted to understand the physics of collisionless plasma phenomena, such as shock waves and magnetic reconnection. In oder to gain deeper insight into these extremely non-linear processes, I develop and use kinetic codes. The outcomes of my studies are relevant for laser-driven plasmas and astrophysics.

Shock wave acceleration

Collisionless electrostatic shocks are strong nonlinear waves, whose formation is mediated solely by the plasma electrostatic field. Such waves can be excited in the laboratory by intense laser pulses interacting with for instance Hydrogen jets. Shocks generated in this way, can then travel through the plasma and reflect the ions at rest. Ions can then reach a velocity, which is about twice the shock speed. This mechanism, already demonstrated in the laboratory, allows for obtaining high energetic ions, with low energy spread and low divergence.

Coulomb explosion

Coulomb explosion of clusters driven by intense laser pulses occurs whenever the laser is so intense to strip all the electrons from the target, leading to a pure ion plasmas. The Coulomb repulsive forces cause the explosion, which accelerates ions. A fascinating phenomenon during Coulomb explosion is the possible formation of shocks shells. A shock shell occurs when several ions with different velocities overtake each other. It naturally happens if the initial ion density profile is not uniform or when ions with different charge-to-mass ratio are simultaneously present. Interestingly, shock shells lead to quasi-monoenergetic ion spectra.

Magentic reconnection in the solar corona

Magnetic reconnection is the physical process leading to a sudden and rapid change of the magnetic field topology in magnetized plasmas. Investigating reconnection events occurring in the solar corona is particularly challenging due to the size of the system, which makes numerical modelling of the corona collisionless plasma particularly hard, and due to the current absence of observational instruments able to capture the microphysics of reconnection in the corona. The big challenge here is to understand how the small kinetic scales influence the macroscopic behaviour of the system.

Particle-In-Cell method

The PIC technique models plasma as particles interacting self-consistently via the electromagnetic fields, which they produce. It works at the most fundamental microscopic level and it is the perfect tool to investigate the kinetic behaviour of plasmas. There are different families of PIC codes: explicit, semi-implicit and fully implicit. A wonderful example of explicit code is OSIRIS, a massively parallel fully relativistic PIC code. I contributed to the development of an innovative energy conserving semi-implicit PIC algorithm called ECsim.

Publications

Journal articles

F. Fiuza, A. Stockem, E. Boella, R. Fonseca, L. Silva, D. Haberberger, S. Tochitsky, C. Gong, W. Mori and C. Joshi, Laser-driven shock acceleration of mono-energetic ion beams, Physical Review Letters, vol. 109, p. 215001, 2012.

F. Fiuza, A. Stockem, E. Boella, R. Fonseca, L. Silva, D. Haberberger, S. Tochitsky, W. Mori and C. Joshi, Ion acceleration from laser-driven electrostatic shocks, Physics of Plasmas, vol. 20, p. 056304, 2013.

A. Stockem, E. Boella, F. Fiuza and L. O. Silva, Relativistic generalization of formation and ion reflection condition in electrostatic shocks, Physical Review E, vol. 87, p. 043116, 2013.

A. d’Angola, E. Boella and G. Coppa, On the applicability of the collisionless kinetic theory to the study of nanoplasmas, Physics of Plasmas, vol. 21, p. 082116, 2014.

E. Boella, B. Peiretti Paradisi, A. d’Angola, L. Silva, and G. Coppa, Study on Coulomb explosions of ion mixtures, Journal of Plasma Physics, vol. 82, p. 905820110, 2016.

G. Lapenta, D. Gonzalez-Herrero and E. Boella, Multiple-scale kinetic simulations with the energy conserving semi-implicit particle in cell method, Journal of Plasma Physics, vol. 83, p. 705830205, 2017.

S. N. Chen, M. Vranic, T. Gangolf, E. Boella, P. Antici, M. Bailly Grandvaux, P. Loiseau, H. Pepin, G. Revet, J. J. Santos, A. M. Schroer, M. Starodubtsev, O. Willi, L. O. Silva, E. d’Humieres and J. Fuchs, Collimated protons accelerated from an overdense gas jet irradiated by a 1 μm wavelength high-intensity short-pulse laser, Scientific Reports, vol. 7, p. 13505, 2017.

P. Antici, E. Boella, S.N. Chen, D.S. Andrews, M. Barberio, J. Böker, F. Cardelli, J.L. Feugeas, M. Glesser, P. Nicolai, L. Romagnani, M. Sciscio, M. Starodubtsev, O. Willi, J.C. Kieffer, V. Tikhonchuk, H. Pepin, L.O. Silva, E. d’Humieres and J. Fuchs, Acceleration of collimated 45 MeV protons by collisionless shocks driven in low-density, large-scale gradient plasmas by a 10²⁰ W/cm², 1 μm laser, Scientific Reports, vol. 7, p. 16463, 2017.

E. Boella, G. Coppa, A. d’Angola and B. Peiretti Paradisi, Gridless simulation of collisionless plasmas with high degree of symmetry, Computer Physics Communication, Computer Physics Communication, vol. 224, p. 136, 2018.

E. Boella, F. Fiuza, A. Stockem Novo, R.A. Fonseca and L.O. Silva, Ion acceleration in electrostatic collisionless shock: on the optimal density profile for quasi-monoenergetic beams, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, vol. 60, p. 035010, 2018.

D. Gonzalez-Herrero, E. Boella, and G. Lapenta, Performance analysis and implementation details of the Energy Conserving Semi Implicit Method code (ECsim), Computer Physics Communication, vol. 229, p. 162, 2018.

D. Gonzalez-Herrero, A. Micera, E. Boella, J. Park, and G. Lapenta, ECsim-CYL: Energy Conserving Semi-Implicit particle in cell simulation in axially symmetric cylindrical coordinates, Computer Physics Communication, vol. 236, p. 153, 2019.

Conference Proceedings

A. Stockem, F. Fiuza, E. Boella, R.A. Fonseca, L. O. Silva, C. Joshi, and W.B. Mori, Theoretical studies of collisionless shocks for laser-acceleration of ions, The proceedings of SPIE, vol. 8779, p. 87790B, 2013.

E. Boella, B. Peiretti Paradisi, A. d’Angola, G. Coppa and L. O. Silva, Dynamics of the Coulomb explosion of composite clusters, 41st EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, Berlin, June 2014.

A. d’Angola, E. Boella, G. Coppa, B. Peiretti Paradisi and R. Zaffina, N-body simulation of nanoplasmas, 41st EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, Berlin, June 2014.

A. Balzarini, R. Fonseca, J. Vieira, E. Boella and L. Silva, Initialization of charged particle beam in OSIRIS, 42nd EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, Lisbon, June 2015.

R. A. Cairns, E. Boella, M. Vranic, L. O. Silva, R. Trines, P. Norreys and R. Bingham, Pellet ignition using ions shock accelerated in the corona, 42nd EPS Conference on Plasma Physics, Lisbon, June 2015.

Teaching & Mentoring

Teaching Assistant

09.2016–01.2017 “Plasma Physics of the Sun” held at KU Leuven by Dr. E. Chane.

09.2016–01.2017 “Introduction to plasma dynamics” held at KU Leuven by Prof. G. Lapenta.

02.2017–06.2017 “Space weather” held at KU Leuven by Prof. G. Lapenta.

09.2017–01.2018 “Introduction to plasma dynamics” held at KU Leuven by Prof. G. Lapenta.

Mentoring activities

I have been involved in the co-supervision of the following Master projects:

B. Peiretti Paradisi, “Studio sulle esplosioni coulombiane di microplasmi” (Study on Coulomb explosions of micro-plasmas), Master Thesis, Politecnico di Torino, 2014 (final mark: 110/110 cum laude, now PhD candidate at Politecnico di Torino).

A. Balzarini, “Self-consistent particle beam EM field initialization for PIC simulations”, Master Thesis, Politecnico di Torino, 2015 (final mark: 110/110 cum laude, now at Cornaglia Group, Italy).

A. Micera, “Analysis of a new energy conserving particle in a cell method for plasma simulations”, Master Thesis, Politecnico di Torino, 2017 (final mark: 104/110, now PhD candidate at Royal Observatory Belgium).

Contact

Elisabetta Boella

Lecturer

Physics Department
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YW, UK
Email: e.boella@lancaster.ac.uk
Skype: elisabetta.boella